I believe the appropriate thing now is to add some wavy lines, to denote time moving quickly backwards.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The scene iss the delightful seaside town of Margate. The cast, a gaggle of gangly Boy-Scouts, on a day-trip during a week-long camp. We had our allowance of pocket-money, a clingy-bag full of mysterious-looking sandwiches, and we were ready for some fun.

And what could be more fun, in a seaside town, than the bank after bank of ‘push’ machines? That’s right, nothing. For many of our merry little band, the height of excitement was to be found in watching 2p after 2p cascade into the bowels of the machine. Each time, with the vague possibility of building up a little shelf of coins, which might… just might … drop off the front, earning you another half an hour of blissful copper-based excitement, and possibly one of the ghastly plastic toys that sit above the wave of coins. We had never felt so alive.

But for a peculiar hardcore of the group, the thrill of the 2p machines wasn’t good enough. The 10p machines were a far bigger draw: high-stakes gaming, for a bunch of 10-year-olds. The real skill with the 10p machines, of course, was to wait for the correct machine, and late in the afternoon, the motherload was found.

On the end of a row of machines, there sat a forlorn figure, hunched over a machine, pounding it with 10p after 10p. We watched in hushed awe, as she must have fed this machine about £30. It was an awesome spectacle. Sensing she had an audience, the lady explained she didn’t have a gambling problem, she was merely collecting the toys. She had almost the entire line-up of the England football team, all in exquisite plastic with over-sized novelty heads. She was only missing one, and that one was sitting on top of the biggest wave of 10p’s that the world has possibly ever seen.

Slowly but surely, she reaches the end of her bucket, and vacates the machine. “That’s it, no more” she sighed, and began to walk off. Meanwhile, being the caring and compassionate young gentlemen we were, her still-warm seat was already occupied. A 10p is inserted…*tinkle*… *tinkle tinkle tinkle*… *tinkle CRASH!!!!!*…

The whole of 10p-mountain had collapsed, bringing with it the delightful plastic figurine. The lady, hearing the crash and our whoops of excited joy, turns around to see a crowd of boys descending on the small change she had spent the best part of an hour feeding the machine with, and looked every inch a broken woman. It was at this moment that the smuggest 10-year-old in the world decided to present her with a tiny plastic Teddy Sheringham, rescued from the bottom of the coin-trough. I don’t know whether she wanted to laugh or cry.